Travel – Page 8 – The Knitting Doctor

Spain Photos, Part 2

But first, a finished knitting project. Don’t faint, there is still knitting going on around here. This pair of socks probably has taken longer to knit than anything. They’ve been sitting in the “I’m bored with this” pile for a month, and I finally pulled them out this week and just sat on the couch until I finished them.

And they fit perfectly!

Project specs:

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces sock yarn, Watercolor
Needles: Size 0 for the cuff, 1 for the sock. I used Ivore double points, my favorite sock needles.
Pattern: Plain sock, generated by Sole Solution software. The sock cuff is 72 stitches, 2 by 2 rib, eye of partridge heel stitch, plain flap heel. Simple as pie.
What I learned from this project: Not much. I’ve done this sock so many times that it’s mindless knitting at its best. Perfect for a train trip, or a few rows after work when you are dead tired.

At first the color pooling of big yellowish stripes bugged me, but when they occurred fairly evenly in a spiral pattern down the sock, I started to like them.

Now, on to Toledo. We took the bus from Madrid to Toledo just for the day, and had a tour guide show us around town. Probably one of the funniest language moments from our trip occurred in the Toledo bus station. We were sitting and waiting for our guide to show up, and I pulled out those socks to knit. After a few minutes I noticed a woman standing behind me watching me, and we began a conversation. She spoke no English, and my Spanish consists of about thirty food-related words. I can ask where the bathroom is, and I have a collection of medical-related phrases that can come in handy, but not in a bus station in Toledo. We seemed to be able to communicate, though. After a lot of sign language and smiling, it appeared that she is also a knitter, she knits socks, and she uses circular needles to do so. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough Spanish to ask where the yarn shop in Toledo was.

Here are the city gates of Toledo:

The cathedral is probably the biggest tourist attraction in town. You can’t take pictures inside, and mine wouldn’t have done it justice, anyway. I’m discovering that pictures inside of large dark buildings just don’t look like much most of the time. Here’s the outside of the cathedral:

Here’s one of the city streets. Yes, they drive on these.

We ran into these guys again. Though we saw Don Quixote all over Spain, this was the only statue of Sancho.

After a nice meal, we took the bus back to Madrid for another day of touring. We learned to take the metro, and walked some more. We did make it to the Palace in Madrid, though we didn’t go in due to the hot date we had with a paella waitress a little later in the day. Here’s the palace:

The next day we took the train from Madrid to the coast. This was not the fast train, and I had four enjoyable hours to listen to my Ipod and knit. Here’s proof:

While we were at the resort in Marbella, we played around on the beach, drove up and down the coast, and toured up into a couple of the white hill towns. Puerto Banus was just up the road from where we stayed, and we went there one day for lunch. John pretended that he owned one of these:

Here we are with a couple of friends that we found:

Here is one of the “white hill towns” that Andalucia is so famous for. We took day trips to Mijas and Ronda for some tourist action and more good meals.

Though it was a bit too cool to swim in the Mediterranean, we did stroll along it in the evening. Note the gin and tonic in hand.

Yes, we dipped our toes in:

And the obligatory sunset shots:

Next time: Gibraltor, Granada, maybe even Sevilla! And the Case of the Missing Sweater Sleeve, in case any of you are interested in knitting around here.

Spain Photos, Part 1

Where to even start? After weeding through the multitude of photos, we still have literally hundreds left to choose from. I have picked a handful, and will show them in stages over the next few days as I have time to post. It’s a ton of fun going through them and remembering the trip!

First up, Madrid.

We saw this guy all over Spain:

One of the days that we were there we took a guided walking tour of the city. We went to a typical local market, where we were astounded by the variety of produce, and especially the meats, olives and fish.

Here’s one of the many plazas in Madrid, Plaza Mayor.

We stopped at a typical tapa bar, where locals stop in for what we would call “a little lunch” in the midwest, and what Hobbits would call “elevensies” or “second breakfast”. (They seem to eat all day in Spain!)

Here is one of the places that Miguel de Cervantes lived in Madrid.

The city symbol is a bear. Here is one that we saw:

And here’s another bear that might be familiar to those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile:

Yes, that’s Sweetpea. Yes, I took her to Spain. She goes everywhere with me, right in my carry on bag, on top of the knitting. I’d jettison the extra underwear before I’d leave her home. And yes, our hotel in Madrid had turn-down service and left a little flower and chocolate on the bed every night.

That’s the sign post right across the street from our hotel. That indeed proves that we were in Madrid.

That strange woman is me hiding behind a statue at the palace in Madrid. We didn’t do the tour, as we had reservations for a swell late lunch, and we all know that food is much more important than a palace tour, right?

Here’s the meal that won out over the palace:

Paella! Paella is actually what got us to Spain in the first place. We have a friend in the military who, while she was stationed in Bahrain a few years ago, kept sending packages of saffron home. Not having a real clue what to do with a lot of saffron, we did research and came up with paella. Of course then we had to buy the cookbook, and the paella pan, and the right rice, etc. So the “free” saffron wasn’t so cheap, especially when you add in the cost of a three-week trip to Spain. We’ve gotten to enjoy making and eating it, though, as it’s a great way to use up all sorts of stuff in the refrigerator. It’s sort of a Spanish version of “hotdish”, but much better.

Here’s a close-up:

Here’s me after the paella:

Last but not least, here’s an early morning shot from our hotel window.

Next time: on to Toledo, and then the Costa del Sol! (And maybe even some knitting content!)

We’re Back!

It’s 6AM here in Western Washington, but the whole Knitting Doctor household has been awake since 4:30. That would be 1:30PM in Madrid, in case anybody is wondering. We both stayed in bed for a bit trying to get back to sleep, but my brain is telling me that it’s time for tapas and a little copa de vino tinto. The pets all looked at us like we were nuts for getting up in the middle of the night.

We flew back yesterday, in what seemed like a 24 hour travel marathon. Actually it was a 24 hour travel marathon, now that I think about it. Hotel to airport, Madrid to Atlanta on a 9 hour flight, then 2 hours in the Atlanta airport, most of it spent standing in crowded, sweaty, and noisy immigration and customs lines. Then another 5 hour flight home. John’s son and family were keeping Riley for the time we were gone, and we just could not wait another day to get her, so we drove there last night to pick her up. By the time we got home and collapsed in our own bed, it was over 24 hours from the time that we woke up whatever day that was in our Madrid hotel. It’s enough to make you despise travel.

But, but, Spain! What a wonderful place! This was one of the best vacations we’ve ever had, and I’m just ready to go back in a heartbeat. (For the record, the immigrations and customs process in Spain went much more smoothly than in the good old US of A.) We were there for three weeks, which seems like a lifetime, though we didn’t even begin to really “see” Spain.

Here’s what our itinerary looked like: We started with 4 days in Madrid, which is an exciting cosmopolitan city, with great food, and two of the finest museums in the world (Museo del Prado, and the Thyssen). We didn’t actually get to them until our last day in Spain, but you could spend weeks in either one and not see everything. The Thyssen was actually my favorite of the two, despite the fame of the Prado. If you ever get to Madrid, don’t miss it. It has the most amazing collection of paintings, and gives you the whole history of art in one museum.

The middle part of our trip was spent on the Costa del Sol, in Marbella. This actually was what started the whole idea of going to Spain, as we have one of those timeshare weeks, and they have a resort near there. Though the Mediterranean is wonderful, the south Spanish coast leaves something to be desired. It’s one long strip of big resorts, some fine, others just big concrete block buildings, and the region has little Spanish flavor or culture remaining. That said, it’s hard to complain when you are walking on the beach in November and sticking your toes in the Med. We took a day trip to Gibraltor which was also fun. There are many little Spanish hill towns up in the mountains near the coast, some of them plastered with tourist shops, but mostly they are very charming, and we did a number of drives up to the hills.

From there we rented a car and drove to Granada, yet another fabulous city. Here we actually stayed at the Parador in the Alhambra, which was the only Parador we stayed in while in Spain. (Spain has a system of state-run hotels called Paradores, which range from ancient buildings remodeled as small hotels, to more modern accommodations.) The Alhambra itself was incomparable. (I’m struggling with finding enough adjectives here to describe all this!) It was built as a walled city/palace during the time that the Moors ruled Spain, and most of the palace dates from the 13th century or so. We had arranged for a private tour guide to show us the place, and spent hours just roaming around.

Our next stop was in Arcos de la Frontera, which is another of the small hill towns, close to Jerez. This might be my favorite of the hill towns. It’s not nearly as touristy as some of them, and has an old part of the city that is just the most fun place to walk around getting lost. The older part of town is a warren of tiny streets and ancient buildings, many not even close to wide enough for a car to pass. Our hotel was a charming old place right on the edge of a cliff, with a rooftop patio to watch the sunset at night. I think we walked every inch of Arcos, and tried numerous tapas bars in an effort to find the best one. Our best driving trip was on the way to Arcos; we took a side road up over a mountain pass through another hill town called Grazelema. The road was spectacular, and we stopped for lunch and a little more vino there…yet another place that I’d love to go back to someday.

After Arcos, we spent three days in Sevilla, which easily was my favorite of the big cities that we were in. We did the usual tourist things: took a tour, saw the cathedral (third largest in Europe), saw another Moorish style palace, the Alcazar, did a riverboat ride. The best thing, though, was just walking. Sevilla’s old town is another of those mazes of tiny streets, most of them undrivable. We found ourselves wondering how people move into apartments in these places, with streets barely big enough for a wheelbarrow, much less a moving truck. We just walked and walked, stopping into more tapa bars and fun little shops. Our hotel there, the Convento la Gloria, was recommended by the Madrid travel agent that we used to help set up parts of the trip, and was probably our favorite of the trip. It was indeed an old convent, and the rooms were tiny and fairly spartan, though with a huge bathroom by Spain standards. It was right in the heart of the old town, just a few blocks from the Cathedral and the famous Santa Cruz district. The service was outstanding, and the restaurant that was part of the hotel was fabulous, though we didn’t find it in any guide books. (Meson Don Raimundo)

From Sevilla we took the train back to Madrid, and got to ride the Ave train, the fast train. Spain’s train system is really wonderful. When they say that the train leaves at 1200, they seriously mean it. It does not pull out of the station at 1201. If you are not on it, too bad. They don’t wait. They get you where you are going, at exactly the time that they say they will. (I probably don’t need to make comparisons to our train system, or lack of one.) We checked back into “our” Madrid hotel, which was the Gran Hotel Canarios, which was catty-corner from both the Prado and the Thyssen. We spent the afternoon at the museums, then overhauled our luggage in preparation for the trip home, then went out for one last meal in Spain. Our travel guy, Carlos, recommended a place near Plaza Mayor called Taberneros, which was an upscale tapa place that had some of the most creative food that we ate in Spain, as well as a great wine list. They didn’t speak much English, and I don’t think that it is on the usual tourist list of places to go, but after three weeks in Spain deciphering menus, we were able to manage pretty well. Our limited knowledge of the Spanish language improved during the three weeks, though certainly nobody will ever mistake us for locals.

There are whole provinces of Spain that we didn’t even think about getting to, and Barcelona is on my list of places to go next time. It’s a wonderful country, with friendly people and centuries upon centuries of history and culture that is fascinating. We took hundreds and hundreds of photos, but haven’t even started sorting through them, so photo-posting will have to wait. And the pictures don’t do it justice anyway. I did get some knitting done while I was gone, but still on the same projects, so no pictures of that either, for now. I didn’t find one yarn shop in Spain, though I didn’t really look very hard. They have a lot of sheep, though, so I’m sure there is yarn there somewhere. That will be for the next trip! Adios for now!

Espana!

There has been very little rain in Spain so far while we’ve been here. (Honest, that song ran through my head on the plane ride over here.) Internet access may be a bit limited during our trip, but I thought I would take advantage of free wi-fi at our Madrid hotel to post a short entry with one or two photos.

Madrid is lovely, I haven’t thought once about work (sorry, boss), and I’ve hardly had any time to even check email. Tomorrow we get on a train and travel to the Costa del Sol for a week on the Mediterranean. Then we spend another week driving around Andalucia, to Grenada, Arcos, and Sevilla. Then back on the train to Madrid for a day and then home. We’ve eaten lots of good things already. drunk lots of good wine, and walked all over Madrid. Tonight we get to go to a flamenco show, followed by some tapas tasting late into the night.

It’s the 400-year anniversary of Cervante’s Don Quixote, and we’ve seen this fellow everywhere:

I started reading Don Quixote earlier this summer, never finished it, but have resumed reading it on the trip.

OK, only one photo, as someone else is saying it’s his turn with the computer. I haven’t found any yarn shops yet. (How do you say “yarn” in Spanish?)

Adios! We’re off to flamenco!

Bluegrass Rules

We had a great time at the Darrington Bluegrass Festival. Well, I had a good time. John thinks that “bluegrass festival” and “great time” are phrases that just should never be used in the same sentence. He gets bored with the banjos after about the first hour, though he’s a good sport and keeps going to these events with me. True love, I tell you.

The Darrington festival is a three day event: Friday night through Sunday late afternoon. The festival is in its 29th year, and is held in a big outdoor amphitheater. The place is surrounded by the northern Cascade mountains, and the sound is great. The population has strong roots to the state of North Carolina, due to mill workers being brought in decades ago to work in the local mill. The festival always has a couple of “big name” headliners, but most of the rest of the performers are local, and play very traditional style mountain bluegrass.

We stayed in a rustic resort about 20 miles from Darrington called the Skagit River Resort. They have a huge rabbit population that runs wild. According to the locals, the bunnies were imported years ago, and when the population got a bit out of hand, they were just released to the wild. They make for great photo opportunities, but I suspect I’d get sick and tired of bunny droppings on everything after awhile.

Here’s the festival stage at night:

Bluegrass festivals make for great knitting time. Here I am working on Rogue. Friday night it was cool enough that I wished I was done with it so I could wear it.

If you are performing on the stage, this is the view:

Here is a photo of my all-time favorite bluegrass band, Country Current. They are five of the best in the business. And they look pretty sharp in their uniforms as well.

One of the great things about this festival is that it is truly a family event. There is plenty of space for camping, and people come with their kids and their campers, and there is music playing in the campground all night long. Apparently hula hoops have come back into vogue, for those of you who missed it the first time around.

Here I am knitting, with that view behind me.

I finished the hood on Rogue, and started on the first sleeve. The hood grafting wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Instead of worrying about grafting the reverse stockinette sections “backwards”, I just grafted the whole thing in stockinette. At least in this yarn, it all blends in, and you can’t tell the difference.

Here is what the park looked like on Sunday:

And my sock’s view:

So when’s the next bluegrass festival, dear??

Home Again, Home Again…

We are finally home from the Great Wine Buying Expedition of 2005. We left almost two weeks ago, and just got home last night. We drove down the Oregon coast, then down the California Coast just past Mendocino. We turned east and drove through the Anderson valley, tasting along the way, then into Napa. After nearly a week in the Napa valley, we headed home through the Mt. Shasta area, and stopped in Ashland, Oregon to take in a Shakespeare performance. After a night in Portland with friends, we headed home. All in all we put more than 2000 miles on the Dogmobile (John’s car), though I suspect a lot of those miles were driving up and down the Napa valley, dipping in and out of wineries.

The trip was very relaxing, and with only a couple of minor glitches along the way. John had a run-in with the law the first day and has a speeding ticket to prove it (his first ever, so not bad I guess). We took a ton of pictures all along the coast. On day five of the trip, I managed to delete every last picture on the camera. Don’t ask. There were a lot of swear words involved. And I wasn’t even drinking wine at that point. At least we have the pictures from the last half of the trip.

We stayed in a number of swell little hotels and inns along the way, and then spent six days in Napa, staying in a timeshare that was billed as “individual cottages”. We’ve found that there is a wide variation in accommodations when you exchange timeshares; this one was no exception. The “cottages” basically were a trailer court. When we drove into the resort, we saw hundreds of little trailers all backed into lots right next to each other. They were all painted different colors at least, and were nicely landscaped. They were quite comfortable and adequate inside, though the outside was a hoot. Here is a picture:

That’s my new sock in progress. In Harlot fashion, I have dozens of pictures of that sock all over the Left Coast. Well, I HAD pictures, anyway. Here are a few from the trip to Shasta:

I managed to get to two yarn shops on the trip. The first was in Lakeside, Oregon, a shop called Angelika’s Yarn Store. It’s in this tiny town, way out of town in the bottom level of the owner’s home. I used to have good pictures of that one. She has the most amazing collection of Lorna’s Laces, with just about every yarn and color in stock. I bought one little skein of Helen’s Lace for a shawl.

The other yarn shop was The Web-sters, in Ashland. Here’s what I got there:

It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot, for socks.

All in all, a lovely trip. I’m glad to be home, and I ~~have to~~ get to go back to work tomorrow; first day after my three months off. I hope I remember where the bathrooms are.

I’ll try to post some pictures later this week of more knitting progress. Between wine tastings, I did manage to make some progress on that sock, as well as on Birch. This week may be pretty much shot to hell, though what with going back to work, and this:

This morning the floor people came and tore up all the carpets in our main level, in preparation for the wood floor installation. It’s just a mess around here. I’ve spent most of my day packing up as much crap as possible in boxes so I don’t have to clean wood dust out of everything I own after the sanding. It’s too bad they couldn’t have done this while we were gone.

It’s good to be back!

Fargo, Not the Movie

No, I didn’t drop off the end of the earth in North Dakota. I had a great time with my sisters; two biological, and one cousin who is an honorary sister. We partied as hard as can be done in Fargo, which is growing into a surprisingly sophisticated little city. If it wasn’t for the weather, I could see living there. It’s that sub-zero winter weather that would very seriously deter me from moving to ND. Snow I don’t mind as much, though it was a bit absurd that it snowed while we were there. Yes, in mid-May.

We ate, drank, shopped, laughed, and visited my mother’s only living sibling (out of nine of them). And played cards. Is it only in North Dakota that people do this when they get together? Whenever we’re in a family bunch, inevitably the cards come out. Hours can be spent around the kitchen table playing card games, gossiping, and eating munchies (and drinking bourbon). There were a couple of nights that we were up until 2 AM playing “hand and foot”, a canasta-like game that got rather wildly competitive.

I did manage to get one yarn-shopping experience in. Moorhead is just over the river into Minnesota, and the Knitty Gritty Cafe is there. It is a lovely place; if you ever get in the vicinity, check it out. Here are a couple of photos:

That first one is my sister Diane pretending to be interested in yarn. Neither of my sisters knits; they try to be good sports when I drag them to a yarn shop. This place has mostly yarn from higher-end companies, including Southwest Trading Company, Colinette, Mango Moon, and Anny Blatt. I bought this:

It’s a little hard to tell from that picture, but there are six skeins, enough for a little summer top.

I did manage to knit on the plane. Here is the evidence:

As is usual for me, I arrived at the airport in Seattle with about an hour to spare. I get quite anxious about flying and missing planes, and drive my spouse crazy by making him get us there way ahead of time. I worked on the Birch shawl while waiting for my plane to arrive. I have been putting in a floss lifeline every other repeat, and am still using markers as well. I had decided that I wasn’t going to use the lifeline any more, as I hadn’t made any mistakes up until now. “Up until now” is the operative phrase in that sentence. Fortunately I hadn’t taken out the last lifeline, as I screwed it up the second row into the pattern repeat. The more I tried to fix it, the more messed up it got. So out it came. This stuff is not fun to rip out; I only had a row and a half to take out, and I think if it had been more, I’d have just cut it off. Here’s a picture of me getting the stitches back on the needles.

One word of advice. When you are threading a lifeline through the stitches on your needle, make sure you get ALL of them on the lifeline. I missed one towards the end of the row, and just managed by dumb luck to notice it as it was attempting to unravel down the shawl.

One last photo that gives just a little hint of the good time that we had:

Cruise Pictures

I got exactly one row of knitting done last night before I found a freaking knot in the yarn about two inches from the end of the row. I undid the knot to find that I had two separate pieces of yarn, with not enough attached to the end of the row to weave in. I said some bad words, tinked back the whole row, attached the “new” ball of yarn and did the one row over, and gave up and went to bed. Sleeves. Gotta love ’em.

Since I have no new knitting pictures, I’ll show you where we went on our anniversary vacation. We took off from LA, through the Panama Canal, and ended up in Ft. Lauderdale, stopping at San Diego, Cabo, Acapulco, Huatalco (Mexico), Costa Rica, and Grand Cayman.

We found a bottle of champagne in our cabin when we embarked. Sweetpea, the bear, is the most well-traveled teddy bear that you will ever meet. Yes, you now know my secret. I sleep with a teddy bear. She goes everywhere that I go, but only in my carry-on bag. I never put her in the checked luggage. And no, she didn’t get any champagne, even if she looks a little tipsy.

Here’s us on formal night. We clean up pretty good, don’t you think?

I packed a teddy bear, John packed a martini shaker and a jar of olives. He has his priorities, after all.

I did actually get some knitting done:

There was a chef on board from the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Ottawa. They did a series of cooking classes that we signed up for. Here I am, with Eric the chef, and my creation. It didn’t hurt any that Eric was gorgeous. I’m ready to move to Ottowa and sign up for the year long course. You really didn’t think I would be that happy over sauteed duck breast, did you?

Then there were the long days in the observation bar, writing my novel. This must have been early morning, as the drink of choice was coffee, not a bloody mary.

The trip through the Canal was fascinating. As you can see here, everybody else thought so, too.

And another one:

And another knitting picture. Notice the bourbon in one hand. No wonder I didn’t get much of that sleeve done.

Sunset over the Caribbean was glorious. John must have thought so, because I had about a gazillion pictures to choose from on the camera. I’ll show you just one.

That just leaves me speechless, so I’ll close with that one!

Wall of Yarn

My favorite part of the San Francisco trip was the little foray out to ArtFibers. All I can say is that it is probably a good thing for the sake of my credit card bill that I don’t live near this place. (Yes, I know they ship, but it ain’t the same…)

For those of you who have never been there, here is the Wall of Yarn:

I sat through FOUR whole days of medical conference just waiting for the chance to get done and go to this place. I learned many new things, and didn’t fall asleep once, thanks to my trusty knitting project. The conference had perhaps 400 attendees, pretty well mixed half and half, men and women. (Oh, I remember the good old days, when I was one of a minority of women physicians! “Lady Doctors”, we were called way back then.) I was the only person knitting, although there was one other woman doing needlepoint. I found it rather amusing that the only people that commented on my knitting were a couple of men sitting near me that said some favorable things.

Here’s what I worked on:

I figure I’m about a third done with this. It was great conference knitting, with those miles of stockinette that I didn’t have to pay any attention to.

Oh, I suppose you want to know what yarn I came home with??

The ribbon yarn in both of these pictures is called “Houdini”. The first one really is as red as it looks. The red shiny stuff with it is Baccarat, which is a nylon sequin ribbon novelty yarn. The red combo will be a long skinny scarf.

The other combo is the Houdini ribbon in a fall color blend, along with Kyoto, a silk/mohair/wool blend in a lovely gold color. This will be a wide rectangular shawl. The women in the store are unbelievably helpful in assisting you with pattern and color suggestions. I sort of had an idea what I wanted for a pattern for this, and the woman helping me sat right down and hand wrote a pattern for this yarn combo that I think will be perfect.

I’ve decided that as an incentive to finish that Birch shawl, I will NOT start either one of these until I finish that one. I tried to work on it while watching the VP debate last night, but got a little worked up and lost track of where I was. Maybe I won’t really try to finish it till after the election.

Vacation, and Finished Projects

Our vacation to Nevada definitely exceeded expectations! We stayed at Walley’s Hot Springs in Genoa, which is close to Carson City. It is in the high mountain desert, so though warm in the daytime, it was quite cool at night. We also had a full moon while we were there, which added to the beauty of the place. Of course we took lots of pictures, some knitting related.

Here is the view from the balcony of our condo:

This family provided our nightly entertainment (click to make it easier to see them!):

Walley’s was built in the 1860’s or so. It has a spa with several natural mineral pools.

We did day trips to Tahoe, Virginia City, and a long bus tour of Yosemite. We also spent a couple of days just hanging out by the pools.

We took a trip on Lake Tahoe on a paddleboat, the M.S. Dixie. Here I am waiting for the boat:

And on the boat:

Then there was the quality time on the balcony at the end of the day, with cocktails and knitting:

I finished this:

If I look like I had a few in that picture, I probably did. The photographer was probably also inebriated. I’ll try to get a better picture this week.

I also finished these:

Details of these two projects will be on my Finished Projects page when I get a little more time to post.

The only yarn shopping opportunity came while on the bus tour of Yosemite. On the ride home, we stopped at a Mobil gas station for fuel and food. Along with the usual things you might find in a gas station convenience store, there was this wall of yarn:

I didn’t buy anything, though I was tempted to do so just so I could say that I bought yarn at a gas station. The two girls at the checkout counter were learning to knit, and graciously allowed me to photograph them:

I’ll have updates on the new things that I am starting in my next post!

Ferry Knitting

We took a little trip to Seattle this weekend. Instead of driving up I-5 hell, we drove across the bridge to Gig Harbor and took the Bremerton ferry across the Sound. This gave me a couple extra knitting hours. I have a little trouble knitting in the car due to motion sickness, but the ferry is great. I love living in a place where part of the public transportation system involves boats and water.

Here I am waiting in the car line to get on the ferry:

And on the ferry:

And the return trip:

I finished the back of Audrey this weekend. Here is Willie’s opinion:

I really love the shaping on this pattern:

I am just not convinced that this is going to fit. It seems like everyone on line says the same thing, so I am going to knit on and hope for the best. It just looks so….skinny. We’ll see.

Audrey; Reunion

I am back from North Dakota! The family reunion was fun. I was raised in a little farm town of about 800 people, and we had the reunion there so it would be easier for the oldest member of the clan to be there. My mother had 8 siblings; her father had 7 siblings, so it potentially could have been a huge gathering. It started out as a reunion of my grandfather’s descendants, but expanded when we were contacted by one of his siblings’ grandchildren; our second cousins twice removed, or something like that. I had met one of them as a kid, but otherwise none of us had ever met before. So it was a great experience to get to know some relatives that we didn’t know, and a way to re-connect with the cousins that we haven’t seen in years. As the older members of the family are passing on, there was more of a sense of urgency to talk to the remaining elders to preserve memories. There is an old family feud from the previous generation that rather stupidly has passed down to my generation, so one branch of the cousins decided not to show up. We laughed and ate, took a lot of pictures, and just in general had a great time. We made a pilgrimage out to the original family farm that my grandfather homesteaded in the early 1900’s. The original farmhouse is long gone, but the house that I grew up in is still there, though it hasn’t been occupied in years.

Here is my old home:

It was truly sort of weird to be there. The house was open so we walked through it. It is still actually in good shape other than a lot of cosmetic things that would need to be done. I don’t think I have the fortitude to live in a North Dakota farmhouse in the winter though!

Here is what main street looks like. Note the pickup drivers stopping to visit:

We had a couple of meals in the local cafe. This is the sort of place where you are in your seat for dinner promptly at 12 noon; not 12:05, but noon. “Supper” is in the evening, and “lunch” is that meal you eat between dinner and supper, or maybe between breakfast and dinner if someone stops over at 10 AM. The whistle blows exactly at noon and 6PM so you know it’s time to eat, and again at 9 PM so you know it’s time you got your butt home if you’re a kid.

Here’s the day’s menu from the cafe:

On to knitting news. I got a bit of knitting done while there. I worked on the Rowan Audrey sweater, and am about two thirds done with the first piece (front? back?). Initially I didn’t like the shaping but it is growing on me. I think the darts really help draw the eye in the direction it is supposed to go to make it look shapely. I don’t think I would have figured them out on the first try without this from Norma. The directions in the pattern for the increases/decreases leave a little to be desired.

I don’t have good pictures. I tried to get pictures tonight but the light is just not right, and they just suck. So rather than showing pictures that suck, I will try again. Actually I am going to block the pieces to that blue sweater this weekend and seam them together. My goal is to finish this next week; I still have to knit the turtleneck collar after the seaming is done.

Yee-Haa!

I finished knitting the pieces to the ice blue sweater. Or, rather, reknitting them. This time the decreases turned out pretty nicely. Not perfect, but good enough. Now I just have to block them, sew them together, and knit the turtleneck collar on.

My timing is a bit off for finishing this project. I leave town tomorrow for several days for a family reunion in North Dakota. (This is why there are no pictures of the finished pieces; the camera is already packed.) Blocking and seaming on the road just doesn’t sound like it will happen. So I guess it will have to wait till I get home.

And you all know what that means.

A new project!!

I dithered quite a bit about what I will knit next. God knows I have enough yarn to choose from. I think it will be the Audrey sweater, from the Rowan # 35 magazine. I have the yarn and the pattern already, so I think this one will go in the carry-on to start swatching on the airplane.

This will be our first real family reunion. My mother had seven siblings; there are three surviving, and a multitude of cousins from my generation. We are meeting in the little town where my grandfather homesteaded, and are planning a whole long weekend of fun activities.

I’ll be back in a week!

Holiday Knitting

I did actually get some knitting done this weekend. I finished the orange boa. The color looks like creamsicle orange to me. I’m not sure exactly where I’ll wear this, but the deck on a cool May evening sounded good for a start.

And one with Riley:

I think you should learn something from every project, even a garter stitch scarf out of novelty yarn. So I knit this continental style; I’m normally a “thrower”, so this was a good chance to practice.

I’m also nearly done with John’s sweater. I have a bit of one sleeve to finish. I got all the loose ends sewn in this weekend, and have started the blocking process. I’m using the 3-needle bind off for the shoulders, and wanted to block the front and back pieces before I did this. Then all I will have left to do is pick up the neck stitches, knit the ribbing around the collar, and seam everything. I can only fit one side of this on my blocking board, so I’m doing it half at a time.

I actually enjoy the “putting it together” phase. I don’t mind seaming, or even sewing in ends. I am a little worried about the seaming on this sweater. I started this thing so long ago that I was clueless about selvedge stitches. The pattern stitch goes right up to the edge, and may not be the easiest thing to seam. If I were to ever be nuts enough to do this pattern again, I would add a plain selvedge stitch on each side.

I forgot to mention one other knitting related purchase I made in Germany. When we were in the train station in Heidelberg, there was a man selling a variety of implements: scissors, knives, and dental tools.

I bought these:

They are just the right size; a bit bigger than my little embroidery scissors, but still small enough for my gadget bag.

Hope everybody had a good weekend!

So Much Yarn, So Little Time

I wish I was not such a slow knitter. Between the demands of real life, and the fact that I just don’t knit very quickly, I don’t seem to get many projects done. I think that is one of the few disadvantages of knit-blogging. I make my daily whirl around the blog world and get just a little bit intimidated by some of you who finish projects at light speed. Please tell me that you have a knitting staff who works on your knitting while you are doing the other stuff that surely is part of your lives as well. I guess I don’t worry about quantity much, but every once in a while I think…good God, those other bloggers have finished five sweaters already this year, and I’m on my first one.

Enough wallowing. On to pictures of more yarn purchases. Which are scheduled for knitting projects in about 2008. This is the only yarn I bought in Germany. Truly, I exercised uncommon restraint. It was only because there was an awful lot of impatient foot-tapping going on from the two men waiting for me. It is bad enough having one man tapping his foot and looking like he’d rather be cleaning the rain gutters while you are trying to weigh the different merits of nine hundred balls of yarn; I had two of them. I did not write down the name of the yarn shop, and the receipt is buried in the folder with the nine million restaurant receipts, and I am not getting up to look for it. It’s in Heidelberg, it is on the main shopping street in the old town center. They had a bunch of sock yarn, I bought some self striping yarn for 2 pair:

And some novelty eyelash yarn for a scarf. Normally I don’t buy this stuff because I don’t wear scarves, but I loved the colors and couldn’t resist. Might be a gift, might be a boa for me. Who knows, I might actually dress up for the theater some night and need a boa. Or I might just fondle it now and then.

Click on the little pictures for a real thrill.

I am at the near-beginning of my 90-hour-7-day work week, so haven’t knit much since getting home. I am still pretty jet-lagged also. And then there was the fun of getting home and sifting through two weeks of mostly junk mail. And our internet connection was down (now fixed). And our hot water heater was dead when we got home Monday (pilot out, got it fixed). And my car wouldn’t start yesterday AM to go to work (dead battery, better now). I think I’ll go watch JAG reruns…